MS 3rd person, present

It is almost perfection itself: Little League championship game, smalltown U.S.A., bottom of the last inning, score tied, bases loaded, two outs. Nine boys in red face nine boys in blue. Smell of popcorn on the evening air, sno-cones, cotton candy on a stick. If only Max Duplantis's elbow didn't shriek like a rabid animal dragged from its hole every time he so much as lifts a peanut to his lips. (But no sunflower seeds, not in his dugout. And any kid who shows up with a cheekfull rides the bench, "Rule 5 - Everybody Plays" be damned.)

Max claps a couple of times and mutters some half-hearted encouragement to his defense. Let's look alive out there. But who is he kidding? He just wants it to end --- a passed ball, balk, brush fire, runaway comet, anything so he can go home and get his arm under a hot shower. He's pretty sure it takes more than tap water to drive out a legion of demons, but that doesn't stop him from running the stuff down the Duplantis family drain by the hogshead. But then nothing helps anymore, hasn't for years. Percodan, Darvon, Darvocet, Lortab, Oxycontin. Two M&M's three times a day would do as much good.

He leans against the dugout wall and pulls for the fat kid at the plate to bounce one off the scoreboard, nevermind that his own son is on the mound, sweating every delivery. But the fat kid only manages a dribbler to first. Side retired. Extra innings. Fan-damn-tastic.

If Max ever writes a guide to coaching Little League, these will be the fundamentals: 1) Don't chew on your glove. 2) Always pee before the game. 3) If you want to survive middle school, don't let your mom put your cup on you in the parking lot. There will be a short section on how to finagle a sponsor whose kid bats .490 and has an arm like an M1A1 Pack Howitzer, two-hundred and nineteen pages on "Managing the Difficult Parent," and a special supplement devoted to the calculus of staffing the concession stand. Throw the ball, catch the ball, hit the ball? Way down the list.

His team, Thriblett Funeral Home (and heaven knows he begged the league president to find him another sponsor, Port-A-Potty, Tampax, anything but a funeral home) comes jogging off the field, cross as wet wasps, already up past their bedtime, and the dugout, so serene only a moment ago --- just little Fontenot alone at the far end of the bench whispering to his Pez dispenser --- is suddenly awash with short tempers and bellows of blame. Max wades in and separates his shortstop and second baseman, who are working out their differences over who was supposed to cover the bag by trading blows to the breadbasket, one of which goes astray and catches Max bang on the old elbow. Max roars, kids cry, and then the ump is barking for a batter.

To be ten years old again and eaten up with baseball. Shoebox full of trading cards, Redbirds on the radio, Sunday sports section spread out on the living room floor like a sacred manuscript. A million pitches chucked up against the side of the house --- fastball, curve, slider, change-up. Throwing in downpours, hailstorms, flash floods, blizzards. Throwing dawn to dusk and by the light of the silvery moon. Throwing until your fingers crack and bleed, heal over and crack and bleed again. The dream of becoming a big league ballplayer, a fan favorite, a leader on and off the field, flipping burgers for charity, visiting sick kids in the hospital. The string of record-breaking seasons, Hall of Fame ceremony, everybody from the club owner to the batboy taking a turn at the microphone, lump in your throat, the ovation washing over you like a tender tide.

Unless you are Maxwell Carson Duplantis, who's washed up before the crowd can squirt mustard on their hot dogs, in the bigs barely long enough to get his cap back on after the national anthem. Fan favorite? Hall of Fame? He's a trivia question on SportsCenter, a joke for the late innings of a televised blowout: Name the only major league pitcher to suffer a career-ending injury without ever actually getting into a game.

Officially he blows out his elbow warming up in the bullpen. The papers don't mention the Jumbo-Pak of Maysweet Sunflower Seeds. And "jumbo" doesn't begin to describe it. This is a bag you squat to lift, a bag you throw over your shoulder, the beginnings of a levee. With this thing, the Central Division is fixed for sunflower seeds. Except Max will never get to insert the first one into his mouth because the bag has been designed to ride out a plunge into the heart of the sun. Impregnable. Bulletproof. Seaworthy.

The rest of the team has finished taking infield, the ump's dusting off the plate, and he's still in the bullpen, going at this bag of sunflower seeds like his family is trapped inside. He's tried everything short of TNT when suddenly the thing is exploding in every direction, a sunflower seed supernova that startles him half out of his athletic supporter --- picture Jerry Lewis struck by lightning --- and he dives for them like Mays trying to save the series. When he hits the ground, the pain is so sudden and intense he thinks he's been shot, and he even glances up into the stands above the bullpen --- seeds in his hair, in his jock --- half expecting to see a couple of good Samaritans already scuffling with the gunman. But the crowd is placid, oblivious, going through their own pre-game rituals --- finding their seats, filling out scorebards --- not a soul paying him the slightest bit of attention, not even the relief pitchers who are all gathered at the far end of the bullpen, tilted back in folding chairs like they might be back in high school trig, bored out of their gourds.

Somehow he gets to his feet, but then he is slipping, fading out, the crowd noise a distant buzz, the belated reaction of his teammates like a slo-mo instant replay. He watches them come out of their chairs and float toward him, one of them (is it Pasco or Swinghammer? And how on God's green earth would he know? He's been in town what --- eight minutes?) shouting into the bullpen phone. His head swims, his knees buckle. And then the ground is up against his cheek again, a blade of grass in his ear.

And through it all is the elbow, an elbow that has suffered some sort of fundamental collapse, an abrupt and irreversible transformation from elbow to something else entirely, an elbow that is simply no longer an elbow at all. That and a spectacular worm's-eye view of a whole buttload of sunflower seeds.

The skipper takes one look at the MRI and then he has his arm around Max's shoulders. Tough break, kid. You got a ride home? His dad drives three and a half hours to pick him up, the ride back is a morphine blur. And then he's back in his old bedroom among the faded pennants and posters, bobbleheads, souvenir programs, popcorn-box megaphone, AM radio, nightlight. We kept everything just the way you left it, his dad says, mom in her green bathrobe, concerned, shaking the dust out of his blankets, fussing with the wind-up alarm clock, making excuses to linger. Then the peck on the cheek, and could she leave the door left open a crack?

And there he is, twenty-two years old, feet hanging over the end of the bed, job offers turned down, college skipped, bereft of even the most rudimentary knowledge that keeps a roof overhead and food on the table, no more self-sufficient than the day he was born. He drops off to sleep and dreams of voter registration, compound interest, resumes, life insurance, laundry, tire rotation, termite control and all the other mundane details of life that even the dullest among his high school graduating class have long since mastered. And barely an hour has ticked off the alarm clock when he wakes, disoriented, the sheets damp with his own sweat, the house silent but in the way one might tiptoe around an unwelcome guest. The drugs have worn off and his elbow feels as if his father has crept in while he slept and tried a little home repair with the Black & Decker Multi-Tool. He reaches for the bottle of painkillers in the gloom and knocks over the glass of water his mother has left on the nightstand. And suddenly it's too much: the injury, the drugs, the long drive, the notion that baseball (and he still can't imagine it, can't make it real) is now in the past. And he pulls the Heroes of the National League bedspread over his head, Joltin' Joe, the Iron Horse and the Bambino frowning down from the walls in disgust, and cries until he hears the door squeak open and feels the familiar weight of his mother on the bed beside him.